Make a Deal with the Devil (See It Through until the End)
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: After the events of "Dangerous Liaisons", Elena makes a fateful choice. Desperate to put a stop to Esther's plan, she finds herself offering an alliance to the one person she'd wanted to see destroyed. Klaus/Elena, Elena/Elijah


**Make a Deal with the Devil (See It Through until the End)**  
>By Sandrine Shaw<p>

It starts with guilt, weighing down on her shoulders and eating at her heart.

After two restless nights, fuelled by the awareness that she cannot condemn five people - one of which she thinks is a genuinely good person (someone she _cares_ for) and two of which she doesn't even _know_ - to death and live with herself after, Elena takes a deep breath and resolves to fix the damage she has done.

She goes to Klaus.

It has to be Klaus because she knows that, unlike his siblings, he'll be ready to believe the worst of Esther - and unlike Elijah, he never expected Elena to be loyal and won't feel betrayed when he learns about her involvement. There's also the fact that he needs her alive to create his hybrids and is unlikely to snap her neck in retaliation.

For now, he's the safest choice for an ally Elena can make, and the irony of that situation tastes like bile in her throat, thick and pungent, making her gag.

* * *

><p>He listens to her tale with stony features. He's quiet and deadly calm until he suddenly isn't, grabbing the blood-filled tumbler from the table and throwing it across the room with an angry cry that sounds more like a wounded animal ready to attack than a sound a human being would make. The glass smashes against the wall behind Elena and shatters, crimson splattering everywhere. Some of it lands on her face, her clothes, the naked skin of her arms.<p>

Elena flinches, and she wonders if she was foolish to think herself safe. Her reasoning seems naive in the face of his anger. Even if he needs her, who's to say that he won't tear her throat out in blind fury and regret it later?

She stands rooted to the spot, scared to move, even though every instinct in her body is screaming for her to turn and run. It takes her a moment to see past her panic, past the blood splatters on her skin, and realise that he looks broken rather than murderous.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, an apology for her involvement in Esther's plan - but he barely appears to be paying attention to her.

"I thought she had forgiven me. That she meant it when she said we would be a family again." He doesn't seem to be talking to Elena. His eyes move over her like she isn't even there. And then, suddenly, he _is _focusing on her, and the difference is startling. To have his full attention fixed on her is almost frightening in its intensity. Elena shivers under his gaze.

"Why tell me, after you've already pledged your loyalty to her? Such a curious change of heart... You want me dead almost as much as my mother does, love, no point denying it."

"Not at that cost."

Klaus raises an eyebrow. A slow, knowing smirk stretches his lips. "Elijah."

Elena feels her cheeks burn with embarrassment and has to force herself to hold his gaze. "I don't want anyone else to die because of me."

There's more to it. He's partly right - it _is_ about her unwillingness to sign Elijah's death warrant, but it's also about not wanting to be like Katherine. She's not like that. She's not like any of them. Backstabbing and betrayal and leaving a trail of _collateral damage_ behind is just not in her nature, and she cannot bring herself to regret that. But there's no need to tell Klaus any of that and give him more ammunition against her.

* * *

><p>"I want you to promise me something."<p>

They're in the Lockwood mansion. Klaus insisted that it's the only place where they can talk freely. With Tyler out of town, Carol being very suggestable to Klaus' proposal to run some errands (Elena wonders if she's under compulsion or just utterly charmed), and none of the other Originals invited to the house, they're unlikely to be disturbed.

At her words, Klaus offers Elena a wry smile that doesn't reach his eyes. He hasn't mentioned if he's made any progress in trying to stop Esther and reverse the damage Elena's blood has done, but his mood suggests that he hasn't. "I'm not my brother, sweetheart. I don't negotiate."

"Good, because this isn't a negotiation. When this is over, you will pack up and leave this town, and you will never come back."

"Have you forgotten about the part where I need your blood to make hybrids, love? As I already told your two boyfriends, I'm not going to leave you behind."

She refuses to rise to the bait and doesn't let the dig at Damon and Stefan and their awkward love triangle deter her. "That's okay, because I'm going to come with you."

That, at last, gets his attention.

"You will have as much of my blood as you need, and in exchange you're going to leave everyone else alone. For good."

Leaning back on his chair, Klaus looks at Elena appraisingly. "What if I'd rather have your delightful blonde vampire friend at my side?"

Elena presses her lips tightly together and swallows the first couple of unkind comebacks that come to her mind. She knows he's trying to get a rise out of her - he's saying it to make her _react_, and he's choosing his words carefully. She knows he's perfectly capable of remembering Caroline's name, and if he was truly set on taking her along, he would do it anyway, with or without Elena's permission.

"Bully for you," she says. "I'd rather have someone at my side who's not a psychotic megalomanic killer, but it seems we're stuck with each other."

"And so once again, Saint Elena is going to sacrifice her happiness for the good of others. Don't you ever get tired, love?" He looks at her with an amused smile, like he's figured her all out.

She doesn't object. Why would she tell him that she's doing this partly for herself? That she cannot bear to stay and live this parody of a life - forever fighting and watching people she cares about die, and being pulled back and forth between Damon and Stefan. She's not just tired, she's _exhausted_, and if she's gonna stick around, it will either kill her eventually or turn her into someone she doesn't want to be. Perhaps leaving won't save her, but it surely beats sitting around and waiting for things to implode.

Why would she tell him any of that when he already thinks he can read her like an open book? There's a wealth of things Klaus doesn't know about her, and Elena intends to keep it that way.

* * *

><p>She keeps her distance from her friends because she knows they'd realise that something was up. It's easier than it should be. Alaric is either drunk or with Meredith. Bonnie is trying to fix things with her mother. Matt is still nursing his injury and needs no further reminders of how different their lives are these days.<p>

Both Stefan and Damon are avoiding her.

Caroline talks a lot about school events and coursework and graduation and all the stuff that should matter but doesn't anymore.

Once, in the middle of a conversation about an algebra test, she looks at Elena and asks with feigned nonchalance, "So, that whole plan the crazy witch woman has to kill all her children... you really think this is going to work?"

"I don't know. It's out of our hands now," Elena lies.

Caroline looks worried.

"How's Tyler doing?" Elena asks, pointedly.

Caroline looks as if Elena had slapped her, and Elena feels guilty. But only a little.

* * *

><p>When she walks through the front door of the Lockwood mansion, Klaus is already waiting for her. He doesn't look happy.<p>

"Good news, sweetheart. I had a friend of mine, who also happens to be a very powerful witch, do some research on the spell my mother has used to bind me and my siblings together and it turns out that it's reversible. Quite easily so, in fact."

His expression belies the cheerfulness of his words, though, and Elena is immediately wary.

"So? Have you done it, then? Is it fixed?"

Klaus smiles grimly and crosses the distance between them. "Not quite, love."

He stands in front of her and brushes a strand of hair from her face, his eyes fixed on hers. She wants to look away. She can't.

It's him who breaks the eye contact, circling around her like a tiger staking out his prey. His hand continues brushing her hair and the skin of her neck. "You see, the one thing that needs to be done... the only thing that will break the bond..."

And she _knows_, has known it for a while, deep in her heart because it was _her _blood that sealed the bond, and the way he acts around her now - both threatening and regretful at once - only confirms her suspicions. She doesn't need him to finish the sentence.

"My death. I have to die to break the bond," she says instead, half-turning her head to where he's standing behind her. Her voice is almost steady, even if it's barely louder than a whisper.

"Clever girl." His breath brushes her skin.

All her senses are heightened. She feels the weight of his body behind her, the gentle curl of his hand against her neck, smells his aftershave and her shampoo, hears the drum of her heart and the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, tastes blood where she's bitten her lip.

She wonders if this will be it - if he's going to snap her neck or reach into her chest and tear out her heart or sink his teeth into her shoulder - right here, right now, bleeding dry on the mayor's living room floor.

When Klaus pushes his bleeding wrist in front of her face, she's so startled that she takes a step backwards. Her back collides with his body and his other arm slips around her waist, holding her in place. "Come on, love, you only have to die. No need to stay dead. Remember that you promised to come with me when I get the hell out of Boredom Falls."

Elena laughs, and it's only when she hears how choked up it sounds that she realises she's been crying. "I'm not much use to you as a vampire. The blood won't work for the hybrids anymore."

"A deal's a deal. If I were you, I'd honour it. Otherwise, I might be obliged to find someone else to take with me."

He pushes the wrist closer to her lips and holds it there until she leans forward, closes her mouth around the wound and drinks.

She hates the taste, hates herself for giving in, hates him for making her. But it's this or death, and she's long since lost the self-righteousness and naivety to believe that she'd really choose death over anything.

When the wound on his wrist has closed, Klaus pulls his arm away and spins her around to face him. His eyes flicker to her mouth, making her wonder if she has his blood smeared all over her lips. Suddenly self-conscious, she makes a move to wipe her mouth, but he stops her hand as she's raising it to her face. Before she can protest, he bends his head and captures her mouth with his.

Elena feels her breath catch in her throat, and yet she isn't as surprised as she should be.

His tongue laps at her lips, and she knows he's only licking the blood away, but it doesn't stop her from opening her lips for him, and he takes it as an invitation to deepen the kiss. The faint taste of blood clings to his tongue, coppery and biting, but it's almost familiar now, and she kisses back before she knows what she's doing.

It's only when he breaks away that the insanity of the situation overwhelms Elena. Less than a week ago, she wanted Klaus dead. Since then, she's made a deal with him, she drank his blood and she's kissed him. He's going to kill her and she will let him.

She tries to search her mind for traces of regret, but can't find any.

* * *

><p>Carol Lockwood's carpet doesn't suffer from any bloodstains, in the end. Klaus decides that Elena's death, now that she has his blood in her body, needs to be a more public event.<p>

She tries to object, but she sees his point.

And so there is another awkward dinner party - a more intimate one, this time: just the Mikaelsons and her and the Salvatore brothers.

It's a potpourri of mutual loathing and betrayal, and everyone acts like they're friends. Eight people, and each of them Elena either has betrayed within the past week or is about to betray in the hours to come. She drinks too much champagne and watches Stefan glare at Klaus and Damon avoid her gaze and Esther act like a loving mother.

The pretense draws on for far too long, and Elena is almost relieved when Klaus stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders. It's an oddly soothing gesture, even when she knows what it will lead to.

It happens very fast. Klaus calls Esther on her betrayal, someone cries out, and Elena feels Klaus's hands on each side of her head.

Later, she swears she heard her neck snap. It's a sound she'll never forget.

* * *

><p>Elena wakes alone in an unfamiliar room, stretched out on a bed. There's a glass of blood on the nightstand, and the smell hits her nostrils the moment she comes to.<p>

She hears voices that sound closer than they are, and even though she cannot make out what they're saying, it's clearly an agitated discussion.

Her fingers are itching towards the glass. She can only resist for so long. When she holds it in her hands, though, there is a small moment when she thinks about how easy it would be to turn it around and spill the liquid, and then just wait until it's over. It's a silly thought. She hasn't come this far to change her mind now.

She downs the blood all at once, locking away all her doubts in a far corner of her mind and thinking she can always hate herself in the morning.

* * *

><p>The morning finds Elijah sitting on her bed.<p>

Elena goes from sleep to wide awake within a split second, and she's not sure if it's a side effect of being a vampire or just the adrenaline. She cannot read Elijah's face, and for the first time since that night on the bridge with Stefan, she's genuinely scared. Not so much for her life - even though she knows that he could rip her apart without breaking into a sweat if he wanted to - rather than for the possibility that her betrayal has broken whatever connection they used to share.

The first words she speaks since she died and came back as a vampire are, "I'm sorry."

Elijah reaches for her hand. "I thought you were dead. Last night, when Niklaus snapped your neck... I spent a very long time hating Niklaus, Elena, but in all those centuries, I never hated him more than in that moment. I understood that it was necessary to undo my mother's spell, but I didn't care."

"It was kind of my fault for being in that position in the first place. If I hadn't agreed to Esther's plan..."

"You were doing what was necessary to protect your loved ones. Believe me, I've been there." He smiles wryly, and Elena knows only too well what he's thinking of. She squeezes his hand.

A clapping sound makes her head snap around. Klaus is standing in the doorway, dramatically applauding.

"What a touching display," he sneers. "As you can see, love, my dear brother is perfectly willing to forgive you for trying to have our whole family murdered and lying to his face. I'm afraid Rebekah and Kol are not quite as lenient. If I were you, I would stay out of their way for a couple of decades."

Elena has become quite good at reading Klaus those last couple of weeks, and right now, he is _furious_. It's all hidden away under a veneer of nonchalance and cheerfulness, but it's plain to see if you know what to look for.

She frowns, suddenly gripped by fear and wondering if maybe something went terribly wrong last night. "What happened? Did you fail to break the bond?"

"Not at all. The plan worked out without a hitch. My witch friend and a couple of dozen of her closest mates have made sure that mother will not wreak any further havoc, and dear old Finn has been... temporarily neutered - and by temporarily, I mean for a couple of centuries. At the very least."

_'Then why are you mad, if you got everything you wanted?'_she wants to ask, but she knows that she's not going to get a straight answer out of him when he's like this.

"When are we leaving, then?"

"Oh, come on, love," Klaus scoffs. "I don't have much use for you if you cannot help me make hybrids, and as you so kindly pointed out, you'd rather have someone else at your side. It looks to me like you found him." He pointedly looks at hers and Elijah's joined hands.

She draws in a sharp breath when the realisation hits her, and her chest feels too tight all of a sudden. "What happened to 'a deal is a deal'?"

"I don't need your pity," Klaus snaps.

A hot wave of anger washes over Elena - she'd normally swallow it and fight it down, but now that all her senses and emotions are heightened it's too overwhelming not to let it out. The borrowed blood in her veins boils. She's off the bed and right in front of Klaus within a flash, and when she pushes him he stumbles backwards until he hits a wall. She notices with some satisfaction how utterly taken aback he looks.

"My pity? I came to you, Klaus. I was the one to propose this deal. I trusted you to fix this mess. I let you turn me into a vampire. I let you kill me! You really think I did that because _I pity you_?" She gives him another push, just enough to drive her point home, but her anger has already burned itself out. Her voice is quieter when she continues, "Look, I get it. You just lost your family all over again. But you still have me."

She turns her head around to Elijah and seeks his eyes with hers. She tries to put it into her gaze that she needs him to be with her on this, before she adds, "You still have us."

Elijah raises an eyebrow at her, but he doesn't object.

When she turns back to Klaus, his eyes are flickering back and forth between her and Elijah. He still looks doubtful and sullen, his jaw set and his mouth a thin line. Elena grasps his hand and intertwines their fingers, satisfied when he makes no move to pull away. When she reaches behind her, Elijah is already there, taking her other hand in his, and she throws him a grateful look over her shoulder.

"Alright?" she asks Klaus.

After a pause that stretches far too long until it starts to scare her, Klaus finally gives in. "Alright," he agrees.

Elena smiles. Beside her, Elijah steps forward without letting go of her hand. "Now that this is settled... where are we going?"

At long last, Klaus's features relax and he grins mischieveously at them, like he already has a head full of plans. "Oh, you're going to like this..."

Elena laughs and shakes her head. _I already do, _she thinks, giving both their hands a firm squeeze.

End. (The Beginning.)


End file.
